Re: Digest Number 134

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 07:38:04 -0700 (PDT)


OK, here is a post that I would indeed call constructive criticism!

"Message: 15

   Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 11:50:03 +0800
   From: David Cake <dave_at_...>
Subject: Re: curious personal attack

>
>So, what do the Widow's Howl, Dusk-leaping Feat,
Setting Sun Throw,
Leaping
>Pursuit Feat or Sunset Killing Shield Feat do? You
know as much as
anyone,
>except maybe Greg.

<snip>

        FWIW I do actually have a fair bit of sympathy with the
'ambiguity is cool' point of view. I think for the majority of HW
feats, what we have is fine. But for maybe 10% of feats, there is
just a little too little information. Usually a single extra word in
the Feat description would fix it. That is not a simulationist
attempt to crush the flexibility out of HW - thats simple player
feedback to finetune the existing descriptions.

        Refusal to supply even that level of added description, or
insisting that its a good thing, seems IMO just silly.

        We could clear up 80% of the queries about feat ambiguity on
this list by adding less than 10 words to the whole book. Why the
hell don't we?

	Cheers
		David"

To this, I will add my own comments.

There is one area where I sympathize with those who complain about using the feats becoming a game of language abuse. Some words in english have multiple, very distinct, meanings. "Lightning" for example, usually refers to an electrical discharge, but is also sometimes used to mean "very fast." Were you translate hero wars into another language, which may not share this double meaning, you would have to choose which of those meanings to use. Flexibility is good, but in this case, some of that flexibility is an artifact of the english language, and I'll agree that is probably not-good. In cases like this, rephrasing the feat to clarify the mode that the word is used in would probably be good. So the feat could be called "lightning bolt sword." "Snarl Darkness" is another feat of this type, as snarl can mean something close to growl, or close to snag, so "Snarl of Darkness" might be a better phrase, as it tends to suggest the growling type activity (although I suppose then people might try and use it to make snags out of darkness.....its is a weird language, english!).

Second, there is at least one feat, sunset leap, where the description and the only known related myths suggest different things. Reading the description, one would imagine something to do with jumping, that works best at sunset. The only myths that seem to relate are to do with Mastakos, relating to his three or four jumps to the sunset lands, or else his passage from west to east upon setting. There may be other feats that incorporate attributes of gods hitherto unknown by glorantha-o-philes. This is fine, Glorantha is a work in progress, but in such cases I think it is important to either quickly provide some mythological framework or be more specific. The litmus test for this situation is: Would either a new player, reading only what is in the rules, or an experienced glorantha-o-phile be apt to think up this feat if it were not provided. For sunset leap, I think the answer is probably not, because although it is in a movement affinity Orlanth is not normally associated with any aspect of the sun. Therefore, since it isn't intuitivly associated with the cult, its interpretations will be totally based on the exact wording used. "sunset leap," "setting sun leap," "leap of the setting sun," and "leap at sunset" will all generate slightly different uses, and if you translate to a different language you can be sure that you will see a slight difference in meaning again. In short, the interpretations of the feat are again an artifact of the language used to describe it. While adding new powers to explore is probably overall a cool and good thing, I think they deserve a few more of the precious words, in one form or another. (Personally I'd favor renaming it "leap into sunset," or "leap as the setting sun," or going for a massive re-write of the feat to "run on the sunset" but I'm not picky).

In short, where the peculiarities of the english language start playing a major role, then perhaps a few extra words to give some more focus might be useful.

Having said that, with a good GM and a good group of players, I don't think the ambiguity is a terrible problem. Fact is, however, that not everybody is both imaginative and open minded.

Just my overly long $0.02 worth.

--Bryan



Do You Yahoo!?
Send instant messages with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

Powered by hypermail